You're Hired!: The New World Of Hiring Nurses??
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I was reading another thread and related to this topic.
It seems as though the days of graduating from nursing school and easily finding a job in any speciality (or one of your choice) are long... Read More

Really, If a company wanted to retain their personnel then when something is lodged against the RN it should be thoroughly investigated by a private company. Not your boss or another manager. If you are good with staff and patients, and another employee is jealous of you or your position anything may happen. Especially, if one has been working in a company for 4 years and all of a sudden a new employee comes in and starts making accusations. I would be looking at the newcomer instead of the long time employee. Interpersonal skills my aunt patudie. give me a break. You are being ridiculous.

Maybe I'm just not understanding this....but it seems your complaint isn't with the hiring process exactly, but the fact that you (yes?no?) were accused of something or other by a new employee, and you think THAT means the hiring process was faulty?

You just seem really angry about something other than whether an applicant has to sit through some tests....

It seems as though the days of graduating from nursing school and easily finding a job in any speciality (or one of your choice) are long gone.

Now the process of employment in nursing seems to be like that of the business world.

A few months ago I applied to a prestigious hospital and had to go through muliple processes before I even had an actual interview.

Behavioral tests, phone questionnaires, interview with HR, and then finally an interview with someone in nursing.

Little did I know that I was being scored and gauged all throught these processess.

By the time I got to my second and last interview, the first question out of the director's mouth was why I scored low on interpersonal relationships (or something to that effect)

I was stunned. I'd been on many interviews over the course of my career, but I'd never been on an interview where my answers to ''what would you do'' or ''have you ever'' type questions were scored, I had thought I did great on my first interview. Secondly what answer could I provide her? I knew I was a great nurse and great co-worker and no single interview or battery of questionnaires could ever or would ever showcase that.

A career that should be so personal has become so impersonal.

It seems as though they are using all these qualitative tests to weed out the worst when in fact I believe they only fail to measure what is truly important in a candidate and fail to highlight potentially great candidates.

There is no test out there that can give you the best candidate. Employers are going to have to fess up to taking a risk, the same risk that prospective employees takes when they accept a new position. It may or may not be the right fit.

The nursing world is filled with too much politics, and the hiring process is one that's full of politics. They have all these hiring tools, but yet they'll still just hire someone they like or someone they know. Most of these hiring tools are just meant to weed out anyone who can't conform to their wants or anyone who will rock the boat.

It seems like every other profession, nursing is all about employing robots to do the job. If you don't fit the mold, you're out!

Welcome to the nauseating world of HR control. Ever since the mental genuises in management created the HR specialist and schools started HR programs, these analysis systems have been used to "predict" a successful candidate. Being a former army 18D, Special Forces Medical Sergeant, I can guarantee all those "HR" people that none of the pieces of paper, psychobabble, interview questions means anything when the first critical event occurs. In combat, it'd be when the first bullet flies at you as you crap your pants and return fire, or try to anyway.

For an 18D, a critical moment is your first aggresive invasive procedure to run down a bleeder from a bullet or shrapnel fragment OR your first chest tube (or multiple), on a shot up soldier with so many life threatening injuries, you have a hard time deciding whether to get the chest tube in, or dig for the bleeding femoral artery, knowing the difference in life or death is measure in tenths of seconds.

The big problem is that the managers and administrators that make bad hires (at the supervisor level), will never get rid of those questionable "leaders" because that would make them look bad. A real problem in civilian medicine. Some nurses are going to flinch at my next comment.... So what, Doctors should get more involved to protect nurses they think are worth keeping. My only termination from a civilian nursing job ended up my getting letters of recommendation from 8 different docs of four different specialties including trauma and ob-gyn. Does any of that mean anything? No, the managers all call each other and "yak". I had a supervisor one time walk around a floor asking other nurses if they had heard of nurse so and so (she had their resume in hand). That supervisors next level supervisor and HR all knew she did it. Sadly, many nurses participated in the hen pecking festival that occured. Some were happy to do it and seemed proud of their knowledge of a potential nurse.

My advice is simple, having been active duty military special operations, worked in over 70 countries, lead and "managed" operations and people measured in the billions of dollars is this... Decide for yourself who you will, and who you won't work for. Be prepared in every interview to say "thank you, but no thanks, please purge all my information from your system, and NO, you may not keep my resume and data for six months". Withdraw your application and leave.

I feel your frustration! I was doing pretty well during my hiring process for a recent application, phone interviews with the director, etc..she actually told me"i would love to have you work in our hospital" & she said the next step was just my results on a survey that she emailed after our convo. I got on my computer right after & filled out the online survey, the next morning a generic rejection letter! They loved me, but reject me because of a personality test?..oh man lol. i was thinking...should i have selected "i am not a passionate nurse" & "i prefer being alone, than teamwork"?! Lol.

If you are someone who has an "in" for a job, you will find often that you are directed to "formally" apply online at a designated time (usually a half hour window, on an off hour for the site). This allows the employer to post the job publicly to meet requirements, but limit the responses, and allows HR to tag you and "let you in". In this type of situation, nobody cares about the psych test because as they say "honey, you gonna pass it with flying colors". I have been told of this by people who were hired in this way, and I have also monitored this very thing happening. The said job posting will disappear after that half hours time as if it never was posted. If you are to rush one of those postings and apply during that window yourself because you literally saw it as soon as it posted, you will either receive a "job closed" or instant rejection email. You might even receive a "fail" on the test.

THis is so true, in my first job after my RN I did only an interview and filled out an application (for formality) nothing else. They job was already mine unless I showed up in a clown suit or something lol.

Thank you all for the very productive discussion. Well I guess I shouldn't say I didn't think i was being gauged during the behavioral interivew, of course I was. I just didn't agree with the results based on how I interviewed and was a bit frustrated at how the second interviewer brought up the fact that I scored low on this (imo) highly subjective ''test''

I feel your frustration! I was doing pretty well during my hiring process for a recent application, phone interviews with the director, etc..she actually told me"i would love to have you work in our hospital" & she said the next step was just my results on a survey that she emailed after our convo. I got on my computer right after & filled out the online survey, the next morning a generic rejection letter! They loved me, but reject me because of a personality test?..oh man lol. i was thinking...should i have selected "i am not a passionate nurse" & "i prefer being alone, than teamwork"?! Lol.

Over the last couple of years, I had applied for around 40 positions within 200 miles. In every single case, I never had a call back from an HR type or the DON regarding the position. With the advent of caller ID and caller ID/Selective Block that are in these phones systems, you can be cut straight to "voicemail" and never reach a human. The current method of "administration", (sorry for sounding rather jaded, but the civlian world and me will never see eye to eye, different priorities), is to do what they have to do legally and nothing more, check facebook, (which i despise anyway), do a social scan, google your name, and check the gossip circles, all of which mean far more than clinical experience of your history with patients and families regarding satisfaction. So, for the time being, until Oyappa federalized health care (Jan-March after his re-election), the Zero response will be the HR way of doing things for a long time to come.

I learned to "game" the HR personality tests so I could at least get an interview. It worked in retail and it worked in nursing. Like any test, you can learn to take it if you've had enough of them cross your path before. (Always ambivilant, caring and a team player. Never an independent thinker.)

As for hiring for personality, when I got my current job I asked the Unit Manager what made her decision (I was a new grad ASN from out of town competing against at least eight local BSN grads who had clinicals at the facility). She said: "We wanted someone who 'fit' with the team. We wanted someone who could grow with us. Your personality seems like it will fit right in." You can train some to perform skills, but you can't train someone to have a personality suitable for a unit's culture.

I reached a point about five years ago when I decided that I would no longer play these games. Now when I have someone ask me a question I answer them honestly. If someone asks me about a flaw I say things like, "I'm not a morning person. Apparently punctuality is important, but since I've installed a tens unit in my alarm clock I find I am less likely to hit the snooze button."

Humor is a lot like large amounts of wine, works every time.

I think people are being bullied into not being themselves. I think there are things that shouldn't be looked at prior to employment like credit checks for non-financial positions, and ridiculous personality testing. I once didn't land a job because my personality profile was creative, the same as the manager interviewing me, and she determined that I would be unhappy doing the job because she would be unhappy doing the job.

Cause, you know, saying always, seldom, never, to the same question means we are the same person. (ow I sprained my eye when I rolled it)

In short, for as much as I look forward to working I wouldn't put myself through this sort of nonsense.

It's pretty much all based on behavior now. They want to know what you would do. They already know you have skills, knowledge, & some sort of experience. Or they can train you in to their department. Hiring is now all about who you are and if you can fit into their team. Questions like "what would you do" and behavioral tests, etc., are a good example of this. Be prepared because that's pretty much how all hiring is now.

It took me three months to get the job I have now when we moved to El Paso. I've gotten so tired of all the test you take when you apply for a nursing job. My husband is a business major and I actually let him answer the questions for the "what you you do" and "how would you react" business oriented questions. This is wrong of course and I know this, but I'm a nurse. I truly care about my patients and their health, even if the company I'm working for or the patient themselves don't!

Interesting. However, one of these days coming soon there will an exodus of nurses retiring. They cannot work forever. With the process listed above, they have effectively tossed new nurses from the occupation b/c WE CAN'T WAIT FOREVER.